Garden City Kansas

Fans of the Pulitzer Prize winning “To Kill a Mockingbird” know Harper Lee is planning to release an unexpected sequel to the famous story later this year. But, you may not know the private author has ties to the Sunflower State reports KSN.

Before she was internationally recognized for “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Harper Lee spent some time in Garden City working on another famous book.

Laurie Oshel is the assistant director of Finney County Historical Society. She says, “Lee came to Garden City in late 1959, early 1960 with Truman Capote.”

Garden City is in national news. A reporter from USA Today came to the southwestern Kansas community talking with residents about the impact President Obama’s immigration plan would have. Some said it would allow undocumented immigrants live without the worry of being picked up by immigration officers. Some worry there will be an exodus as they look for better jobs in other parts of the country.

A historical romance series has an unusual setting—Garden City, Kansas. Simone Beaudelair starts the series with the story of a small town pastor and a church organist. The author dedicates the book to the people of Garden City saying it was a wonderful place to live. High Plains Holiday is the first installment of Love on the High Plains. Simone Beaudelair is the pseudonym for a single mom and teacher now living in Texas.

The southwestern Kansas housing market may benefit from a small portion of the Farm Bill signed into law Friday. The trillion-dollar piece of legislation that is largely associated with agriculture also has something to say about who gets USDA home loans in rural America.

GARDEN CITY, Kan. — Sister Janice Thome’s office is a 2003 brown Ford Focus with a backseat piled high with paperwork and a prayer book.

Thome puts 125,000 miles a year on this car, picking up boxes from the food pantry, finding a mattress for a newcomer, delivering a sick soul to a doctor’s appointment. All the while, she fields emergency calls on her flip phone, responding to her mission to serve the poor of Garden City, out on the plains of southwest Kansas.

This day, Thome is teaching her teen parenting class at the alternative high school.

Harvest Public Media reporter Peggy Lowe has been visiting Garden City working on a series of stories profiling “meat packing towns” and their economic, social and cultural life and challenges. Fittingly, one of her first contacts was Sister Janice Thome who provided a ground-level orientation to the community. Here is Peggy’s first field note featuring Sister Janice.

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The billboards that dot the long gray line of Interstate 70 west from Kansas City tried to lure me to tourist towns that promised Wild West shows, lots of sunflowers and even an Oz Winery.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation documents suggest that the events described in two crucial chapters of Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel", In Cold Blood, differ significantly from what actually happened. Writer Kevin Helliker explores this new evidence and other findings in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

You get used to things always being there, maybe even take them for granted. Things like snow at Christmas, Grandma sharing her wisdom no matter how old you are, Mom meeting you at the door when you pull in the drive, calling Dad when you have trouble with your car, or driving to Herb's Carry Out for a burger and a piece of coconut cream pie. Somehow, you're surprised when they are not. November 21 will be the end of an era. Herb's Carry Out, located on Kansas Avenue in Garden City, will be gone.